A Shade of Dragon 2 (4 page)

I
t was only
a matter of minutes before the glimmer on the floor of the hearth made itself known to me, and I scooped up the flat shard of crystal to find that Theon was already there, gazing back at me. The crystal had been activated already—but when?

Oh God, had he witnessed me kissing Lethe?

Peering into the crystal, wishing my hair wasn’t so mussed and my cheeks not as full of blush as they were at the moment, I deduced that Theon was in some kind of dim shop, its wall lined with small drums and funnily-shaped guitars. Behind him stood Michelle, which I tried to ignore—even though she herself looked rather mussed at the moment. Distant firelight fell across their faces.

Well, he couldn’t hear me. I’d realized that by now. So my only option was crude sign language… crude, and quick. I could only assume—and hope—that Lethe had gone to speak with his father on the possibility of wedding an Earth woman; I didn’t want to be too full of myself, but the context certainly indicated as much. I could also only assume—and hope—that such a conversation would be a long one.

But then again, maybe Lethe’s father wouldn’t even be available to see him. Maybe Lethe was already stalking back down the hallway now.

First, I tried to communicate the simple phrase
I love you
, by pointing to my eye, then my heart, and then Theon, twinkling back at me in the crystal shard. We’d barely said it yet, but it seemed appropriate to remind him of my affection.

Then I motioned,
I’m in the castle
. I pointed to my eye again, then slid one hand into the other, and then pantomimed a steeple with my fingers.

Next, I leveled one palm and notched upward three times, hoping to relay to him,
On the third floor
. I wasn’t even positive that it was true, but it was what I had thought I’d noticed when Lethe had been leading me, blindfolded, back into this room.

I shrugged pointedly, to show him that this was a question, and then jabbed a finger toward Michelle. Why is she with you?

Michelle must have recognized the intent of the question even if Theon didn’t, because while he was frowning thoughtfully, she sprang forward, gesturing.

Behind me the door flew open, and my fingers flexed with shock, sending the gleaming shard tumbling to the ground again. I leapt to my feet and whirled, hoping that Lethe had failed to notice the item over which I’d been hunched.

He froze where he stood, the door still hanging open behind him, and stared at me with eyes of a different blue than I had ever seen. They were not hard and cold, as they had first been. They were not warm and deep, as they had later been. They were… fragile.

He stared at me like he couldn’t believe me.

“It was you,” he whispered, shaking his head. “You took the pendant.”

My gaze drifted down to his tunic, opened where the pendant had once hung. He’d noticed that it was gone.

“Lethe,” I said, trying to think quickly, “it was—it was an accident—I—”

Lethe stormed forward and gripped my shoulders, giving me a shake. My head snapped back and forth. “There are no accidents,” he seethed, thrusting me to the side. My heel caught in the edge of my petticoats and sent me tumbling to my side.

I propped myself onto my elbow and Lethe leaned down and scooped the pendant from the floor, examining its soft light.

No. He knew… and the pendant was still active. He could see Theon. He might even be able to deduce where in this city Theon was.

The shard of crystal went dark, and I feared for Theon—but Lethe only closed his fist over the pendant and glared down at me.

“I will send the guards into the streets,” he promised. “They can smell fire dragon stink from the skies.”

L
ethe swept from the room
, locking it behind him. This time, I didn’t bother to fling myself against the wood; I didn’t bother to scream, cry, or beg. I knew that it would do nothing to help me. All I could do now… was wait.

I went to the window and watched as a team of guards were dispatched—in dragon form—from the castle, into the skies and the streets, in their hunt for Theon and, inexplicably, Michelle. The moonlight throwing itself down onto the crisp white snow illuminated the entire city. It would have been beautiful, if things weren’t so hopeless. As it was, the beauty of the city only registered as bleak and solitary.

I wished suddenly for my mother. For Dad. Anyone…

The sound of a key turning in the lock wrenched me from the window. Lethe stood in the doorway, disheveled, vengeful, and cold. Everything about him emanated the winter world outside this window.

“I have sent the guard,” he informed me.

“Lethe,” I pleaded, treading forward, into the room. “Please—”

“Please, she says,” Lethe snarled.

“Please don’t punish Theon for my mistake! I’m sorry!”

“Of course you’re sorry. Everyone is sorry.”

“You don’t understand. I just—I was desperate, I—You kidnapped me, Lethe! I don’t live here!” I knew that this was a weak defense. What I’d done was wrong.

“You are more akin to the ice people than you know,” Lethe informed me, his eyes a dark winter’s storm. He strode forward, but halted before he reached me, looming in the doorway. “We, too, are ruthless. We, too, are utilitarian and concerned solely with logic.” I could see the eddies of snow reflected in his eyes. “We care not for the fragility of a heart.”

Dammit, I felt guilty now more than ever.

“Lethe, I’m sorry. I didn’t know—I didn’t think—” I didn’t know what to say.

“Oh, are you sorry, my lady? Do you feel that, perhaps, I was wounded by your minor and pointless betrayal? The betrayal which, in truth, tipped Theon’s hand?” Lethe stepped closer, now peering down at me. “You need not apologize, my would-be queen… for I am as innately composed of ice as you are,” he hissed. His hand plunged into the hair at the nape of my neck, clutching it in his fist. I winced, my neck stretched for him.

But all he did was look at me closely, absorbing every curve of my face, suddenly breathless and hesitant, suspended amid the violence.

I thought he was about to say something, but we only hung there in silence together, and it was someone else’s throat clearing which startled us from each other’s eyes.

“Prince Lethe,” a masked guard announced from within the still-open doorway. “We have found smoke issuing from a merchant chimney in the town square. We await your decree; our forces surround the domicile.”

My throat constricted with terror for Theon.

“Break down its door,” Lethe commanded coldly. “And remove this—prisoner of war—to the dungeon, where she belongs: amongst her compatriots.”

With that, he released my hair and I slumped, oddly surprised and even betrayed by this turn of events… though I supposed I should not have felt either.

Lethe strode from the room without turning back.

The guard advanced with sword drawn and seized me roughly, dragging me from the room and out into the hall.

W
ith Michelle straddling me
, writhing and purring with all the confidence of a housecat, I had gone still in a kind of dumb shock. In truth, fire dragon females—though I had met none my own age—did not behave with the same degree of looseness as did human women. Or should I say girls?

Regardless of her perfect features—the arched cheekbones, the pouty lips, the cat-like eyes—I felt nothing. As Michelle leaned against me, I was still holding the damn lute, dangling at my side.

I didn’t know why I didn’t expect the kiss. Part of me was so removed from this moment, it was almost akin to dissociation. I experienced her kiss—the rush of moist heat as her mouth descended onto mine, the mewl which emanated from within her throat—almost second-hand. I disentangled myself from her grip with a pained sympathy.

“Michelle,” I said.

She must have recognized the tone. A man who is going to sweep you into his arms and tenderly make love to you in some abandoned shop will not look at you with such compassion as he retreats from your heavy-handed play at his heart—or some other such part.

“I—”

I hadn’t even begun the delicate task of rejecting such an egotistical woman when the crystal mirror, propped alongside my leather satchel along the wall, throbbed with light, and I shot to my feet, dumping Michelle onto her hindquarters.

“Hey!” she whined.

I’d already forgotten her completely, covering the distance between myself and the mirror in only four strides. The mirror was alight—which meant that someone had activated a shard of its crystal with their blood, breath, tears, or sweat.

I saw Penelope in the fogged depths of the mirror… but she did not appear to be alone. Her blouse had been pulled slightly open, and her back was pressed against a stone wall. My heart leapt into my mouth; was she being tortured? Molested? If her virtue had been robbed by one of those icy animals, so help me, I would see that the entire universe paid a debt to the both of us. I would tear the stars from the sky. I would forge battle with the powers that be themselves—

But one more moment, a closer glance, and I saw that everything was not as it seemed. Penelope had no expression of pain or horror or despair on her face; if anything, in the split second before the crystal shard was smothered between their two bodies, the expression on her face was one of sheer rapture.

It couldn’t have been so.

The floor dropped out from beneath me, and I just stood, breathless, certain that I was seeing things wrong.

Michelle approached behind me.

I ignored her.

She cleared her throat.

I ignored that, too.

Every now and then, Penelope and the wearer of the pendant would separate for mere seconds, and I would catch a flash: her jaw, thrust upward; fingers in her messed hair; the shadow of cleavage exposed, or a hickey not quite hidden by the shadowed contours of her throat.…

“Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Michelle murmured off to my right.

“Not now,” I warned her.

The mirror had gone completely black. I wondered what they were doing… Was it smothered between their writhing bodies? Had the pendant been torn off and forgotten in a puddle of clothes?

“I mean, here you are, having just rejected the hottest piece of—”

“I said shut up!” Behind us, the fire in the fireplace gusted as if in a sudden wind. I was losing my grip on the element, letting the emotions override me, fumbling away the self-restraint every dragon was taught early in life.

The mirror lit again, and I saw Nell leaning down, peering into it intently.

My stomach rolled with sickness at the sight of her. The hair, everywhere, as if someone’s hands had been deep inside of it. The blush on her fair cheeks. The way her dress remained undone, and the slip beneath was so sheer, so generous to the viewing public. Who had she been with? And why? For the sake of all that was pure inside her, why?

But she didn’t answer that question. Instead, she pantomimed that she loved me.

My jaw clenched, and the hearth at my back roared again.

Did she love me? Did she, truly? Or had the Oracle been right all along? Was my destined mate beside me now, however vain, however petty? Was Michelle not also strong? Was she not also clever?

Penelope went on to pantomime her location within the castle, and finished with a ridiculous and nigh insulting question:
Why is she here?
directed at Michelle.

Michelle caught it, too, and sprang forward to defend her dignity.

“I’m not the one cheating on my dead-sexy, crazy-famous boyfriend, Nell!” she said, pointing into the mirror. Before my eyes, I saw the both of them transform into children. I imagined them as best friends in their earlier years: vindictive, back-handed, jealous, and childish.

Behind Nell, the door to her chamber swung open, and Lethe stood framed in the light of the hall.

Thinking fast, I whipped the cloak from off my shoulders and tossed it across the mirror, blanketing the room from view. I could not allow him to see the quarters we kept lest he recognize them, nor could I afford his realization that Penelope was communicating with us. In spite of everything… I would never want harm to befall her. It would be better if he saw her holding a dark and empty crystal, and knew nothing of this brief exchange—even if he, Lethe Eraeus, enemy of the Aena dynasty and abductor of my beloved—even if he had been the one with whom her face had entertained such an elated expression…

I glanced to Michelle at my side. For as thick as she could be, there was a thoughtfulness to her now, even while still drunk.

“What should we do now?” she asked me.

“It is wise to find shelter elsewhere, lest our location is compromised.” I hated to go so far, but it was possible that Penelope could not be trusted anymore. “Wake Khem and Einhen; I will prepare the bag, and we will go.”

“But it’s freezing out there—”

“Michelle, we haven’t any other choice,” I rebuked her, allowing my stress to spill into our conversation. “You were the one who wanted to come. You were the one who used my own honor against me in order to secure yourself a position in this troop. And now you must face the harsh environment we have all agreed to travel in. Yes, it is freezing out there. It is freezing out there because the ice people are cold, and wicked, and without a single heart amongst them! My father is imprisoned within the castle walls. Your best friend—”

“Ex-best friend,” she corrected quietly.

“—has been abducted by their prince, never mind the semantics. And my own brother has been lost, and is likely dead.”

As if to punctuate every proclamation, the fireplace behind us burst into life again and again.

“If you want to go home now, believe me, I will take you,” I whispered, my tone as dark and dangerous as any ice dragon could manage. “I will happily be rid of you, back to that young man who is so proud of the alcohol in his system, and the palaces of the Ballinger house, the world of inheritance awaiting you.” I loomed over her. “Shops, shops, and more shops, Michelle; that is your world. And I will gladly return you from whence you came.”

There was a bang on the door, and the signage—Gordon’s Instruments—shuddered from the impact.

The ice dragons.

“Wake the men!” I hissed to Michelle, snatching my cloak from off the darkened mirror. I pulled on the garment and moved to fill the leather satchel with our few and crucial rations. I didn’t glance over my shoulder. She would not stray from orders. There was something about her which spoke of a soldier.

But it didn’t matter.

With the crunch of splintering wood, the sign gave way to the force of the dragon’s weight, and the door blew inward, the night beyond spewing into the room with the fragments of shattered wood.

Ice and the fire were pressed against each other now. Even if our fire was nothing but a spark, it was a weapon. I couldn’t shift in this environment and lose my clothing, but I could still use the element to my advantage: I opened my mouth and sent a swath of flame against the front entrance of Gordon’s—which caught as easily as kindling.

“What the hell!” Michelle cried behind me.

The ice dragons hesitated, and I unleashed another fireball in their direction. The fire would not hold against the storm outside. I only hoped to allow us enough time to escape. I glanced over my shoulder—Einhen was still groggy-eyed, Michelle was holding a broken bottle of mead at the ready, and Khem joined me with his own orange tongue of flame—but when I turned back to face the entrance of the instrument shop, the ice dragons were spilling inside, extinguishing our heat as they entered.

I was forced back, and turned to Michelle.

“There is a cellar door in the back room. Go there and find the exit into the street. It is certainly encrusted in snow, and potentially in ice; the dragons will not be guarding it, because it will be hidden by the very element which serves them.”

“Okay,” Michelle piped, fleeing into the back room of Gordon’s Instruments. Although there were four ice dragons in Gordon’s shop, they all let Michelle go without much interest. Of course. It was me whom they had come for.

One of those four dragons—a shimmering, slender, white creature with black, bottomless eyes—dove for me with a blast of ice as sharp as dagger blades. I felt my face, the only unprotected part of my body, lacerate in several places, and I staggered back, shaking off the pain. I was so dazed by these turns of events—Michelle’s heavy-handed persuasion, the mirror coming alight, Penelope and the ice prince entangled together, the spat with Michelle and now the ice dragon infiltration—I still held the damn lute.

When I exhaled a plume of white-hot flame into the wooden instrument, its interior cavern sparkled with flame, and when the white dragon converged on me again, I smashed it against his throat. He went down, stunned, and I delved into the leather satchel slung on my back, extracting a sword from within. Again, I burned the blade with my own orange tongue and sent it hurtling through the air, sinking into the white throat of the offending dragon. He went down and I vaulted atop him, gripping the hilt of the Aena sword and extracting its dripping, bloodied blade from his throat.

When I looked up again, one of the other ice dragons, also white, had come closer with a strangely human expression in his eyes. I assumed that they were family, and I reeled back with the blade, prepared to strike in this dragon’s moment of weakness… but then my arm relaxed, and I held the sword again at the defensive position. I could not let the atrocities of the ice people make me become like one of them.

Turning from the carcass of the fallen white dragon, I observed the scene at the hearth and saw that Einhen was in the grasp of a dark blue dragon’s jaws. He struggled and bled, but appeared to be very much alive; the dragon had secured him at the shoulder. Khem, meanwhile, had been cornered near the front window of the shop, squaring off with another dragon, this one small and black laced with blue. The dragon was too small to be of major concern, even though Khem appeared to be cornered. His body language expressed no despair as he engulfed the other dragon with his flames.

Forced to choose between the two, I dove to Einhen’s side and slashed at the offending dragon with my sword, taking half of one wing. The dark blue dragon wailed, jaws falling open to release my wounded friend. Einhen collapsed, groaning and wounded but alive.

The dark blue dragon relented, reeling backwards toward the front entrance of Gordon’s. As he receded into the winter storm beyond, a bloodcurdling wail emitted from the street—and I realized that Khem was no longer in the store.

And beyond the doorway was snow streaked with blood.

“No,” I breathed, lurching forward.

In all my years as the prince of The Hearthlands, I had only seen peacetime; I had never seen the horrors of war.

Leaping over the corpse of the first white dragon, the one I had stabbed in the throat, I raced into the snow-choked streets to see that Khem had been dragged into the distance, and the other white dragon—the one I had shown mercy—had its bastard head lowered over the torso of my friend, ripping through his remains. Its glistening white snout shone with Khem’s vitality.

My mouth fell open.

There was no possibility that Khem would live through this. His head was hanging, boneless and slack, at the end of his neck. So much blood… and the viscera which clung to the white dragon’s teeth… Khem wasn’t even struggling…

Still, I was electrified, spurred through the shock and driving snow toward the white dragon and Khem.

“Get off of him, vulture!” I roared, slinging my sword through air. The white dragon, stained red, scrambled backward, abandoning Khem. Not because he was afraid, I was sure, but because he was not hungry for the carrion of my old friend. There was nothing to be gained by protecting him from me, nothing to be gained by taking him off into the sky. There was no way Khem would survive, but I couldn’t just let him be eaten alive.

“Khem,” I breathed, dropping to my knees beside the fallen form of my friend.

Although Khem’s eyes were open and moving, his mouth was not. Blood coursed down his chin.

I had just scooped my arms around him and was gently lifting him when an explosion of fire rattled the very roof of the instrument shop.

Dammit! Michelle! Einhen!

The shop was utterly engulfed… with the exception of one patch of ceiling, fallen through, blackened, but extinguished by a layer of ice. The fourth dragon, forgotten—a tortoiseshell of black and white and chilly blue—was receding in the sky above, snow spilling down into the inferno surrounding me… and Einhen was gone. Wounded and dangling like a doll in the mouth of that serpent.

Dammit!

Wincing, I forged through the collapsing shop and backroom, into the cellar, and then up a small stairwell and through the cellar door, which Michelle had left open for some reason…

Not Michelle… not Michelle too…

Dragging Khem’s limp legs over the shallow stairwell with me, I trudged out into the snow, scanning the dark and solitary street as Gordon’s Instruments collapsed behind us.